Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy recut into a single 4-hour film

Press Coverage for “The Tolkien Edit”

The site has been getting an absurd amount of traffic over the past week. The peak-day was Wednesday 21 January, when page-hits rose as high as 35,000 per hour. It’s simmered down considerably since then, presumably because most people have acquired a copy of The Tolkien Edit, or the novelty has simply worn off. 😉

Nevertheless, quite a few articles have been written about the fanedit (some positive, some negative), which I have rather enjoyed perusing. If anyone is interested, here are some of the more notable online publications who have spared a little virtual ink for “The Tolkien Edit”:

Kotaku — The first thing I thought after watching The Battle of Five Armies was “boy, that’s a movie that didn’t need to be made”. Now, thanks to the power of fans and the internet, we can pretend around half of Peter Jackson’s entire Hobbit trilogy never happened. A guy by the name of tolkieneditor has sat down with a copy… [Read More]

A.V. Club — Scarcely a month after the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, someone has recut the nearly eight-hour Hobbit trilogy into a single 4.5-hour film. The maverick behind this edition, known only as “tolkieneditor,” revealed the project (and provided a link for download) in a Wordpress blog… [Read More]

Nerdist — J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is about 300 pages long. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit isn’t part of a trilogy. That didn’t stop Peter Jackson from turning the single book into three long films that included plenty of extras not in the book. As a fan of most things Middle-earth, I was excited to see more… [Read More]

io9 — Well, this was inevitable. A Tolkien fan — less enthused by Peter Jackson’s expansive, three-movie adaptation of The Hobbit than others — has created his own edit of the trilogy, trimming the 9+ hour-long saga into a much trimmer four hours and 21 minutes. Check it out! Created by the quite succinctly named… [Read More]

The Telegraph — A discontented ‘Tolkien editor’ has created one film to rule them all. A Hobbit fan who felt that the trilogy’s length prevented it from being as good as it could be has taken matters into their own hands and come up with a shortened version. Going by the name “tolkieneditor,” the anonymous… [Read More]

The Guardian — Never underestimate the fury of amateur film-makers outraged that their heroes’ long-gestating artistic endeavour didn’t turn out quite the way they had hoped. The Jar Jar Binks-jettisoning Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Edit, which purported to deliver the version of George Lucas’s film everyone actually… [Read More]

Forbes — I admit it, I haven’t seen the Hobbit trilogy. I was a fan of the book as a child, and it was my first introduction to the amazing world of fantasy stories, but I swore I’d never step foot in a cinema to watch a Jackson telling of a Tolkien story after the travesty of The Return Of The King. The problem with that movie… [Read More]

Polygon — Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy adds many elements that weren’t in the original — and pleasantly slim — novel. The three movies have a few memorable scenes, but may be too long to provide an enjoyable interpretation of the original work. Too much content that tied this film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was… [Read More]

/Film — For some fans, interaction with films they love (or want to love) has become a full-on interactive thing. For various reasons — love, hate, curiosity, education — we see fans cutting their own versions of films more and more often. Even Steven Soderbergh is getting into the act of recutting favorite films. One obvious… [Read More]

The Escapist — If you thought Peter Jackson’s The Hobbittrilogy was entirely too long… you’re not alone. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy was great for Lord of The Rings fans who were hungry for more hobbit-on-orc action, but many felt it was a tad… long. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which was three books, The Hobbit… [Read More]

Barnes & Noble — We all knew it was coming: As much as we loved every moment spent in Peter Jackson’s incarnation of Middle Earth, there’s no denying that his expansive take on The Hobbit strays far and wide from the slim source material. But now, one fan has edited the nearly nine-hour trilogy into a slimmer, but… [Read More]

c|net — Want to watch The Hobbit trilogy but think Peter Jackson’s fanfic is way too long? This fan-edit cuts it down to a much more manageable four hours. We’ve got a real-life Edward Shire-hands on our hands here. A Tolkien fan going by the moniker TolkienEditor has taken Peter Jackson’s entire The Hobbit trilogy… [Read More]

Indiewire — We always figured somebody would do it, but we didn’t think it would be so soon. And who knows who long this will last online before the mighty powers of Warner Bros. come swooping down to squash this out with all the fury of Smaug, but an anonymous Middle Earth fan, going by the name of TolkienEditor, has… [Read More]

The Daily Dot — A decade ago, we could have never imagined wanting Jackson’s films to be shorter; the films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were at least three hours apiece, and the extended editions added another 30-40 minutes, which fans lapped up. But it’s 2015, and here we are with, as many keep pointing out, a 300-page… [Read More]

First Showing —“May the hair on your toes never fall out.” Hurry – before the angry legal goons in Hollywood put their foot down and stamp out this fire! In all truth and honesty, I fully expected this (someone would re-cut it into one movie) to happen sooner or later, and I’m glad it was sooner. A J.R.R. Tolkien super-fan who… [Read More]

Stuff.co.nz — An anonymous film buff has done what many would describe as a favour to The Hobbit trilogy, and shortened it. Known only as tolkieneditor, the fan enjoyed “many aspects” of Sir Peter Jackson’s trilogy, but felt it would be better if it was refocused and shortened. “Let me start by saying that I enjoy… [Read More]

Hypable — The inevitable has occurred only a month after The Hobbit finale hit theaters. Someone took all three films and condensed them into one. A person who only wishes to identify himself as TolkienEditor is hosting their 4 1/2-hour cut of The Hobbit, dubbed the “Tokien Edit,” on Archive.org and through… [Read More]

BGR — The story of The Hobbit didn’t need to be stretched out to fill three feature-length films, but that’s what the studio decided to do. Personally, I enjoyed all three movies, but I would love nothing more than to be able to travel back in time and tell Peter Jackson what needed to be cut to make for a well-paced… [Read More]

Blastr — When watched together, Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy lasts a DVT-inducing 7 hours and 54 minutes. That’s quite a long trilogy, considering it takes only four to six hours to read the lone book. So an unknown editor, going by the name Tolkien Editor, took it upon him/herself to recut the trilogy into a more… [Read More]

The Verge — A group of merry men bring along a naive hobbit and travel for long spans of time in a quest for treasure. Whether we’re speaking broadly about The Hobbit or cynically about Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film trilogy is intentionally open for interpretation. In either case, one superfan did the time-crunched… [Read More]

JoBlo — I love me a good fan edit. Whether it be the various revisions made to The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones to the reimagined take on Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel, fan edits are a democratic way for movie buffs to offer an alternative look at feature films they felt could have been… [Read More]

Geek.com — When The Hobbit film trilogy began, the big question hovering over the entire production was “Is it really a good idea to turn a short children’s book into three three-hour movies?” Now, as Peter Jackson’s second epic Middle-earth series comes to a close, it turns out the answer was a resounding “no,” but… [Read More]

Tor — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has been concluded for barely a month, but already one ambitious Tolkien fan has recut the bloated, eight-hour adaptation into a much more manageable affair clocking in at a little less than four and a half hours. How did the anonymous TolkienEditor do it? By cutting out… [Read More]

UPROXX — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is ridiculous folly – this is firmly established. There’s just no way a 300-page kids’ book needs to be a nine-hour epic. The most frustrating thing about it all is there are definitely one or two pretty good Hobbit movies hiding inside the trilogy, but they’ve been buried under hours of… [Read More]

Yahoo! Movies — An industrious Middle Earth fan has edited Peter Jackson’s epic The Hobbit trilogy from three films into one, cutting the overall run time in half. The new edit titled “The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit” was created by a mysterious tinkerer named ‘TolkienEditor’ in order to “re-centre the story on Bilbo” and… [Read More]

Flickchart — It was only a matter of time before someone out there took a knife to Peter Jackson‘s nine-hour-plus opus that is The Hobbit trilogy and re-cut it into a single film, more befitting the single book from which it was adapted. That time is now, as a user named “tolkieneditor” on WordPress has claimed… [Read More]

MoarGEEK — One particularly dedicated J.R.R. Tolkien fan took Peter Jackson’s bloated Hobbit trilogy into his own hands last week and edited it down into a much more manageable four hour long film. By cutting out several of the things that Jackson added in order to make the series span three films instead of… [Read More]

doddle — There are a lot of things that have irked me about the Lord of the Rings prequels that comprise The Hobbit. I’ll give some credit to director Peter Jackson in that when you watch the whole trilogy in one go, it’s far more satisfying, but you can feel where it’s been expanded. One of my hobbies is re-editing… [Read More]

Someecards — If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of watching Peter Jackson’s nine-hour adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 300-page novel, The Hobbit, you might be in luck. Sort of. One industrious fan decided to condense the entire trilogy into one four-hour movie that’s only twice as long as it needs… [Read More]

Moviepilot —For quite some time, fans have been expressing their grief over The Hobbit trilogy’s overall length: three films, fans say, is a little overkill. Several filler scenes were worked into the movies, leaving behind a fairly confusing storyline with more fluff than necessary. But now, much like several fans have… [Read More]

DesignTAXI — Following the release of the final Hobbit movie last December, a dedicated fan has created an awesome mash-up that condenses Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, giving you a single four-hour flick that hopes to be a close resemblance to J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novel. The anonymous fan, who… [Read More]

Nerd Approved — There has been much grumbling about The Hobbit being released as three films. So, it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to condense the trilogy. A diehard Tolkien fan, aptly named “TolkienEditor,” stepped up to the plate and created “The Tolkien Edit,” which runs… [Read More]

Tech Times — There’s a growing trend in Hollywood to take source material from one book and turn it into several films. In fact, the word “trilogy” has become so common that it’s surprising a studio hasn’t tried to copyright it yet. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is one such film. Originally a book by J.R.R. Tolkien with barely… [Read More]

Cultured Vultures — Early on in An Unexpected Journey, Gandalf tells Bilbo the story of his ancestor Bullroarer Took, who allegedly decapitated the goblin king with club, thus knocking the head 100 yards and into a rabbit hole, winning the battle and inventing golf in one fell swoop. It’s a passage that’s taken almost verbatim… [Read More]

Cyborg City — In my previous post, I wrote about the anticipation for fan edits of The Hobbittrilogy as a single film and I characterized them as “inevitable edits.” Last week I encountered TolkienEditor’s The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, which is the first of these recombinations to be publicly released. Culture bloggers… [Read More]

Sight On Sound — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has been one of the most frustrating franchises in movie history. Many fans still love it, but Jackson’s need to overload the films with invented love triangles, back stories, needlessly long and laughable fight sequences, unnecessary winks to the original… [Read More]

Mordor ~ The Land of Shadow — Many fans have been waiting for the theatrical version of The Battle of the Five Armies to hit online, so they can begin to re-cut and edit what many feel is an oversized version of The Hobbit by Peter Jackson! One of the first of these edits is now available for viewing online. A fan of both… [Read More]

RantLifestyle — Are you one of the many disappointed fans of The Hobbit who cried for a shorter, less bloated adaptation of the beloved book? So am I! And so is anonymous internet person tolkieneditor, the dedicated soul who turned an unnecessary trilogy into one film. Here are 10 reasons why their edit is probably… [Read More]

If you stumble across any more articles, reviews or podcasts, feel free to post them in the comments.

Now that the torrent for the fanedit is bouncing along healthily, and comments are petering off, I’m going to be taking a break from the site. However, if people continue to submit subtitles for the film, I’ll happily keep adding them to the list.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I will be releasing a follow-up fanedit, focusing primarily on Gandalf’s story and the investigation of Dol Guldor. The editing for the first two films is completed (clocking in at a feature-length 80 minutes already); however, I will be waiting until the extended edition of The Battle of the Five Armies is released, before I add it to the site. I think you’ll be surprised by how well Gandalf’s story works as a movie unto itself, albeit a much darker, creepier, more psychologically daunting movie than Bilbo’s adventure romp.

12 thoughts on “Press Coverage for “The Tolkien Edit””

Bravo! Bravo! I watched it today, and will watch it often! Peter Jackson had a gift for scenery, most of the casting, but he failed at faithfully telling the story, both in the Hobbit films and in the LOTR. Thank you for staying with what JRR Tolkien gave us.!

Hi – I see you have removed a number of links to download the 6GB version and now only have torrent. Alas our local system blocks torrent peer to peer. Any chance of some of the previous links being restored?

Just finished watching, my two complaints would be to cut the Rock Giants scene entirely and to recut the credits, since they references actors and actresses not included in your edit. Other than that, great job!

Hi, I watched your edit and have to say I am impressed. I was wondering why the film appears grainy and pixilated though. I downloaded the 6gb version, but much of the visual quality seems degraded; possibly because of the editing process? I would love a higher quality version to enjoy on my 60 inch hdtv! All-together a worthy effort. Thank you for doing this!

Hey there! I’ve always wanted to see an edited version of this trilogy, and will be watching yours when I get home. However, I have waited until now to seek one out, as I (correctly) anticipated that the Extended Cut of the Battle of Five Armies would contain footage that would be worth it to include in a fan edit, specifically Thorin, Fili, and Kili’s funeral, and Dain’s corronation (all told, probably about 3 mins total). Would you be willing to add these small scenes into your edit?

Wonderful work. After seeing the first one in the theater, I was not going to see the other two, but you have made it all watchable! I would say the transition from the Misty Mountains to Beorn’s house was somewhat fast, but otherwise nothing which you cut was missed. Bravo.